IT WAS MIDMORNING, OR THE BEGINNING OF THE NIGHT for the 588th. I was snapping open and closed one of the hair slides that had proliferated everywhere as the other girls grew out their hair and trying, not very successfully, to fall asleep. My nerves were still shot from the night before. It had been a creepy night. An eclipse had turned the moon a sullen red. Zhenechka said it was beautiful. Zhigli said it was bad luck. I only knew that I hated flying beneath it.
And then there were the dark blue pills. The regimental doctor gave them to us pilots to keep us alert. They keep us alert, all right, and narrow our irises down to nothing so that our eyes look dark and strange. I had taken one before my last flight of the night and now the thin stripe of light that fell through the crack in the shutters seemed unbearably bright.
It was not a good night to be struck with insomnia. The words of Pasha’s last letter ran circles inside my brain. His hopelessness was beginning to scare me. But anything I might say to console him would feel empty or, worse, falsely cheerful, because he really was staring a horror in the face, and my words couldn’t shield him from it.
I sighed and propped myself up on my elbows.
We were based in a schoolhouse, the only intact building in a bombed-out town long since evacuated. The other girls’ sides gently rose and fell under their blankets. Vera was sitting at the teacher’s desk, rolling cigarettes out of coarse military-issue tobacco. I raised myself onto my elbows and said quietly, “You might as well get some sleep if you can. She’ll be fine. That mission will be easy compared to those daylight bombing runs you love so much.”
Vera asked, “If it was Iskra, would you be sleeping?”
“Of course not.”
Tanya entered the classroom, pulling off her leather flight helmet and unbuckling the belt around her baggy flight suit. She was a willowy young woman with heavy-lidded eyes and a long face usually decked out, as then, with a big, sloppy smile. Vera looked up and relief flashed across her face.
“Did you stay up all this time waiting for me? You’re not my babysitter!” Tanya laughed.
“I’m not? Then why do I spend all my time keeping you out of trouble?” Vera got up, pulled her pilot close, and kissed her.
They stayed like that for a long moment, eyes closed, arms resting lightly around each other’s waists, before Tanya pulled away. “Not in front of everyone, Verok. You’re embarrassing me.”
“They’re all asleep.”
“Not Valka. I can see you watching us, you voyeur!”
“Am not. I just can’t sleep,” I mumbled, covering my eyes with the crook of my arm. Seeing them filled me with a forlorn feeling. How nice it must be to serve alongside the person you loved. To see them and know that they were safe and well every day, not just through an occasional letter. To draw strength from them.
Vera asked her pilot, “How was the morning bus to headquarters? Did Number 9 get shot full of holes?”
“You’ll be happy to know that I brought our baby home completely unscathed.”
“Good.” They sat down on Tanya’s bed, which creaked under their weight. Vera’s voice turned serious. “Tatiana, I want you to stop flying these solo missions.”
Tanya laughed. “I was ferrying a political officer. It was the safest thing I’ve ever done.”
“I understand that. But anything can happen. And if it does . . . I want us to be together.”
“Verok. Don’t talk about that. It’s bad luck.” A pause. “But I’ll stop.”
“Tanya. Vera. Go to sleep!” hissed Iskra.
They dropped off into silence, but sleep still eluded me. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands hard enough to make myself see spots, even though I knew from experience that nothing would make the effects wear off faster. I grew acutely aware of every bruise and ache I’d acquired being jounced around in my plane’s hard seat.
A curling paper border of capital and lowercase letters ran along the top of a green chalkboard so worn its plywood backing showed through. The wooden desks and chairs, marred with ink spills and carved initials, were stacked against the back wall to make room for our cots. It was strange to remember that I’d been a student scarcely more than a year ago. I’d struggled with algebra and complained when my parents made me miss a flight because I hadn’t finished my math homework.
The memories were like watching a film about someone else’s life. I’d never be that schoolgirl again. When Raskova said she’d make us into soldiers, I hadn’t realized I’d be giving up my old self. The one who could sit beside Pasha in the cockpit of our little plane as easy as anything. We could never have a moment like that again, not now that planes had become killing machines.
We might save our Motherland and our homes, but we could never really return.